Integrated circuits can be found in many of today's consumer electronics, such as cell phones, video cameras, portable music players, printers, computers, etc. Integrated circuits may include a combination of active devices, passive devices and their interconnections.
Photolithography is one of the principle processes in the manufacture of integrated circuits, and consists of patterning the surface of a semiconductor wafer in accordance with the design and layout of the integrated circuits to be formed. Generally, the photolithography process and its corresponding equipment consist of a light source transmitted through an optical system onto a reticle or mask with a pattern. The pattern produced by the light and the reticle or mask is then aligned to a wafer covered with a light-sensitive photoresist by an alignment system, wherein the pattern is then transferred to the photoresist.
The photolithography process of transferring a pattern to a photoresist is commonly described as a layer-by-layer methodology, wherein each layer is formed by exposing a reticle with only a single layer image. Thus, as integrated circuits become more complex, some manufacturing designs require the use of thirty or more reticles, and at a cost of several thousand dollars each, the expense of producing these reticles for a low volume run can become prohibitively expensive.
Thus, a need still remains for a reliable reticle system and method of fabrication and a reliable integrated circuit system and method of fabrication, wherein the reticle system and the integrated circuit system are formed using a multi-layer reticle grouping/pairing flow that matches corresponding multiple layers on a same reticle, thereby reducing the number of reticles. In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, increasing consumer expectations, and diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is increasingly critical that answers be found to these problems. Moreover, the ever-increasing need to save costs, improve efficiencies, and meet such competitive pressures adds even greater urgency to the critical necessity that answers be found to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.